First of all let me say that I have been reading these forums and going on this website for a few weeks and it has greatly helped me out in pursuing a job in the game industry. I know what the job of a qa tester entails(low pay, long hours, doing things over and over again), but I eventually want to use it a path to becoming a producer. I've graduated from High School and I'm going to community college in the fall and planning to transfer to a University after I get my associates degree, my major will likely be in communications

I'm about to apply to a couple of developers out in the Los Angeles area and I'm afraid that I don't have much experience in testing per se, so I wanted to see if maybe you guys could help me with my resume to get rid of the useless stuff that wont be relevant to a qa tester. Here is the website that I'm hosting it on http://sk0rncobra.resumehype.com/. This would help immensly since I'm kind of having trouble figuring out how to enhance my resume.

Lastly, how do I write a cv? I apologize for not knowing this and I've looked online, but I figured game career guide would be a better place to ask since you guys could tell me what to put on and what not to put on it for a video game industry career. Thank you so much everyone and I look to hearing from you soon.

Now for the criticism (this is based of the .doc):
- Its over one page in page view. Unless you have a fair amount of industry experience, it should never be longer then one page.
- You have two different email addresses for contact.
- You have what appears to be two different postal addresses.
- Your contact details in the top right is in a tiny font given that it is important information.
- The skills section is just one big paragraph. These need to be bullet points.
- These are jobs, not skills:

Quote:

Organized, Detail Oriented, work well independently as well as with a team. Customer Service, Sales, Handle multiple inbound and outbound calls, Administrative support, Filing(Numeric and Alphanumeric), and Data entry.

- Word and Excel is not the sum of applications in Office. If you only know Word and Excel, then say Word and Excel, not Office.
- Beware of saying 'Extremely proficient' or similar with Office applications. A lot of applicants say that and interviewers will test your knowledge if they are feeling particularly mean. For example, do you know how to create a Contents page in a Word document? Or use macros?
- Your Education heading is in bold but your Experience heading isn't.
- Ideally, your education and should be before your experience if you don't have any relevant experience. Bear in mind that you are up against with degrees as well.

Now for the criticism (this is based of the .doc):
- Its over one page in page view. Unless you have a fair amount of industry experience, it should never be longer then one page.
- You have two different email addresses for contact.
- You have what appears to be two different postal addresses.
- Your contact details in the top right is in a tiny font given that it is important information.
- The skills section is just one big paragraph. These need to be bullet points.
- These are jobs, not skills:

- Word and Excel is not the sum of applications in Office. If you only know Word and Excel, then say Word and Excel, not Office.
- Beware of saying 'Extremely proficient' or similar with Office applications. A lot of applicants say that and interviewers will test your knowledge if they are feeling particularly mean. For example, do you know how to create a Contents page in a Word document? Or use macros?
- Your Education heading is in bold but your Experience heading isn't.
- Ideally, your education and should be before your experience if you don't have any relevant experience. Bear in mind that you are up against with degrees as well.

Thank you so much for this criticism and looking over my resume. It's the first time I've had to create a resume so I know it's quite atrocious. As for the CV I'm pretty sure it's a cover letter, but certain developers just say "CV and Resume". I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a difference. I will definitely make improvements to it regarding what you have said. Truthfully I am proficient at Word I do know how to create a contents page, use macros, create graphs, headers and such. Excel on the other hand I have experience with, but I'm not nearly as proficient as Word. Finally, The contact info and whatnot, I was just signing up for the site in a hurry so I put different contact info than what was on my resume.

Being that I have only a High School diploma is it even worth applying to be a tester? Would there be anyway to get a leg up on the competition, since I don't have a degree or anything? How do I go about creating a cover letter?

Again I really appreciate your help.

Thank you

Edit: Okay I updated my resume a bit the site puts a space after every sentence so thats why its over a page normally its about half a page in word. http://sk0rncobra.resumehype.com/

Being that I have only a High School diploma is it even worth applying to be a tester? Would there be anyway to get a leg up on the competition, since I don't have a degree or anything? How do I go about creating a cover letter?

Experience trumps education, unfortunately you have neither which doesn't help. You may as well apply, at worst you will be rejected. At best, you will have a job.

- You still have two different email addresses and you postal address is on there twice. Have ONE email and postal address on the resume.
- As part of your education, what grade(s) did you get?
- Not a skill but a character trait. This should go in your covering letter:

Quote:

Organized, Detail Oriented, work well independently as well as with a team

- This is part of a job description or what you did at work, not a skill:

As Yaustar said What grades did you get at High School? Don't put them all down, just relevant ones (Science, Mathematics, English are common). You're applying for a QA role, so the priorities should be showing that you know a lot about games and that you can communicate efficiently (particularly written communication).

I'd change the formatting of your section headers ("Education:", "Experience:" etc) so that they look different from the places listed in your experience section -larger font, underlined or all caps for example. Also with your experiences, they seem to take up a lot of space, without giving very much information. I'd suggest having the company name, your job title, and the dates you were there all on a single line, followed by one or two sentences summarizing what you did (remember to push anything concerning communication skills).

You may also find it useful to apply for Open Beta tests for online games, so that you can mention that, but be sure you actually try to find & report bugs though so in an interview you could tell them about what you found, how you reproduced it, and how you informed the devs of it.

Finally a section that I typically include and that I quite liked seeing in applicants CV's is a section at the end about you. What are you hobbies, what games you like to play, why you are interested in the games industry. Don't go too in depth, you want to spark their curiosity, so that they will invite you to an interview to ask you more about it. I once had a friend who had amazing success with his CV after adding "I can touch my nose with my tongue" to his CV, and was asked to demonstrate it several times.

Finally a section that I typically include and that I quite liked seeing in applicants CV's is a section at the end about you. What are you hobbies, what games you like to play, why you are interested in the games industry. Don't go too in depth, you want to spark their curiosity, so that they will invite you to an interview to ask you more about it. I once had a friend who had amazing success with his CV after adding "I can touch my nose with my tongue" to his CV, and was asked to demonstrate it several times.

On a resume where space is limited, I would say that this should go in the Covering Letter.